Chapter 2
No word came from Jarrod by the time the family finished dinner. When Nick and Heath got up from the table, they looked at one another, and Heath nodded to Nick. Nick said, "Heath and I are gonna head for Lodi and see if we can track Jarrod down."
Victoria nodded. Audra just stared down at her plate.
Heath said, "We'll wire you by morning. We'll stay in touch."
They each kissed both their mother and sister, knowing that the women were worried sick about this and the kisses would do little to relieve that worry. They packed up quickly and left right away, heading to the barn and saddling horses without saying anything to each other.
Lodi was less than 20 miles away. Even in the dark, Nick and Heath were there in fewer than four hours, and on the outskirts of town they ran into the posse Sheriff Madden had sent up this way. They shared coffee with the men but declined to bed down for the night. "The sheriff said you might as well head back to Stockton in the morning," Nick said. "Heath and I will keep looking for Jarrod."
"Somebody said they saw your brother heading north out of Lodi this afternoon," the head of the posse said.
Nick and Heath both nodded. They knew the sheriff in Lodi and thought checking in with him was the first thing they ought to do, so they headed there and were lucky to find him in even at that late hour.
"I didn't expect you here this fast," the sheriff, Mort Malone, said first thing.
"Expect us?" Heath asked.
The sheriff handed them a telegram. It was from Fred Madden and asked that Malone be on the lookout for Jarrod Barkley, hold him if he was there and wire back. "I got this this evening, and the posse came in, too," Malone said. "I figured you'd be looking for your brother sooner or later. What's it about? The posse said they were after your brother about a murder but that doesn't sound right."
"A man in Stockton was murdered," Nick said. Then he hesitated before he said, "Jarrod might know something. Have you seen him?"
"I checked around after I got this," Malone said. "Bob Stone over at the saloon said he saw your brother this afternoon but Jarrod was riding out of town."
"Did Stone talk to him? Did Jarrod say where he was going?"
Malone looked suspicious. "No, Stone didn't talk to him, just saw him heading north. What's going on, Nick? You don't know where your brother is?"
"No," Nick admitted and left it at that.
"Have you wired Fred Madden back about Stone seeing him?" Heath asked.
"Yeah," Malone said. "I haven't heard back from him yet."
"I reckon we better go wire Mother and at least let her know we're on the right track," Heath said to Nick. "She won't get it until morning but it'll help."
Nick nodded, said, "Thanks, Mort," and he and Heath started to leave.
"Wait a minute," Malone said, and they stopped. "I wanna know what's going on, straight out."
Nick and Heath looked at each other. Nick finally said, "Andrew Bliss was murdered and it looks like Jarrod was the last to see him. Jarrod disappeared after that and we're trying to find him."
"That doesn't sound like Jarrod," Malone said. "You don't think he had anything to do with this murder."
"We don't know what we think," Heath said. "We just want to find him and find out what he knows."
"If he comes back this way and we've missed him," Nick said, "you do what Fred said and hold him. We're gonna keep going north and see if we can catch up to him."
Malone knew nothing about Jarrod's problems after his wife was killed, and the surprise about all this was still on his face as Nick and Heath turned again and left. Heath said, "The telegraph is still open. We ought to wire Mother."
"Yeah," Nick said. He noticed Bob Stone's saloon was still open, too. "You do that while I go talk to Stone and see what else he might know. I'll meet you at the saloon."
They split up, and in a few moments Nick was dismounting and tethering his horse up outside the saloon. He went in.
He knew this Stone fellow but not well. The man owned the place and tended bar. He was back there now, cleaning the top of the bar. The crowd, if there had been one, was thinning out.
"Nick Barkley," Stone said in only mild surprise. "You're here looking for your big brother."
Nick came to the bar. "Yeah, I hear you saw him earlier."
"Yeah, I saw him heading out of town."
"Did he come in here?"
"No, I just saw him heading straight out the north road out there."
"You didn't talk to him? He didn't say where he was going?"
"He's not staying in touch, huh?"
"No, he's not," Nick said. "Bob, I need to know everything I can know. Are you sure it was Jarrod you saw?"
Stone shrugged. "It sure looked like him and that gelding he rides. Maybe he's up here on business he couldn't talk to you about, Nick."
"I hope so," Nick said. Nick checked his watch. It was just after midnight, and Nick was feeling a little hungry. "Got any sandwiches left?"
"I'll go rustle some up," Stone said. "You want a beer?"
"Yeah," Nick said. "Draw one up for Heath too. He'll be here in a minute."
Stone drew up two beers and put them on the bar, then went back into the kitchen.
Heath came in before Stone came back. He joined Nick at the bar, and Nick moved his beer in front of him. "Did you find out anything?" Heath asked.
"Stone says he saw Jarrod heading north, that's all," Nick said.
"He didn't say where he was going?"
"No. Stone didn't talk to him. Just saw him riding out of town."
"I wonder if anybody else saw him or talked to him."
"I don't know." Nick sounded discouraged.
"So what do you want to do now?" Heath asked.
Nick sighed. "Ask the sheriff to check around tomorrow and see if anybody talked to him, then head up to Sacramento, I guess. We can wire back here from there. Maybe Jarrod went there."
"If Jarrod's on the run, he won't be going anywhere people know him," Heath said.
"He came here, didn't he?" Nick said. "Maybe he is just off on business of some kind for Bliss."
"Maybe," Heath said, "but wouldn't he have sent us word somehow? He could have wired us from here, but he didn't. It's not like him to just take off and not let us know where he is."
"I know that," Nick said.
Stone returned with a plate of ham sandwiches, saying, "Howdy, Heath."
"Howdy," Heath said, and he and Nick each grabbed a sandwich to go with their beer.
Stone said, "Anything else I can get you fellas?"
Nick shook his head. "Not unless you can figure out something our brother said to somebody or did when you saw him yesterday that'll help us find him."
"Aw, don't worry, he'll turn up," Stone said. "I'll bet you find him up in Sacramento."
"Your mouth to God's ear, Bob," Heath said.
The Barkley men went to talk quickly to the sheriff, asked him to see if he could find anyone who had talked to Jarrod and to wire them at the Capitol House in Sacramento by tomorrow. Then they were on their way, heading north again. They both had their doubts that Jarrod had gone to Sacramento, but they believed Stone when he said he saw Jarrod heading north. They didn't know where else to look, and unfortunately they didn't know what they were going to do if they didn't find any trace of him there.
And they didn't. The first place they went was to the Capitol House where they planned to stay, Jarrod's favorite hotel, but they knew him well there and Jarrod hadn't been there in months. The night was slipping into morning, and they were exhausted, so they checked in and got some sleep. After a few hours, they got up again and tried the police headquarters but all they found out was that Sheriff Madden had sent a request to watch for Jarrod to them, too. As blunt as any police sergeant anywhere was, the sergeant at the headquarters asked flatly, "Is your brother on the run?"
They hated hearing it put that way. It was too close to the bone. Nick said, "We don't know what he's up to or where he's gone or why."
Nick and Heath left then. They didn't have any idea where they were going to go from here. They stood for a moment in front of the police building, looking around.
"What do you want to do?" Heath finally asked.
"Punch Jarrod out," Nick said.
That obviously wasn't what Heath was going for. "You want to look around here and spend the night tonight, or you want to push on now?"
"Push on where?" Nick said. "He could have gone any direction from here, or never even come here."
"Well, tell you what," Heath said. "Why don't nose around Jarrod's haunts here, and if we don't find anything, we get a good night's sleep and see what's what in the morning? Just because Jarrod hasn't turned up here yet doesn't mean he won't, if he is out here on business and not on the run. I mean, he might be out at somebody's ranch or something."
Nick leveled a gaze at him. "You're grabbing at straws."
"Maybe. Maybe not. But we gotta wire Mother and Sheriff Madden and find out if they know any more anyway, so we'll have to hang around waiting for a reply and something from the sheriff in Lodi. Tonight we can get something to eat and talk and rest and come morning we might have some fresh ideas."
Nick heaved a sigh. "Maybe you're right. But I'm still gonna punch him out the minute I lay eyes on him."
An ugly thought ran through Heath, almost making him shiver, the thought that they might not lay eyes on their older brother again at all. If he was on the run, he was doing a good job of it so far. What if he did kill Bliss, and what if he got clean away from them?
Heath shook it off. There was no way he was going to believe Jarrod killed Bliss. If he was on the run, it was for some other reason, and Heath wasn't ready to believe he was on the run yet either. He still believed there was some explanation for Jarrod's behavior, some reason he hadn't wired them to tell them where he was or what he was doing. "Let's send a couple telegrams and get some food," he said and laid a comforting hand on Nick's back.
Nick said, "Yeah."